This invention is intended to address the following problem. The cable TV box and satellite TV box jointly referred to herein for convenience and simplicity by the term “receiver box”, or just “box”) in use today performs its well known function of descrambling the signal provided from the satellite company or the cable company so that programs can be displayed on reproduction equipment, such as TV. Of course, the word “program” as used herein refers to shows and/or commercials, typically with video and audio, that are transmitted to a wide audience by cable and satellite companies. In some such systems, the box can also serve to send a signal back to the cable or satellite provider that contains audience monitoring, or viewership, information on what program is being viewed and when. The viewership information can be sent to the cable provider via the same cable, and to the satellite provider via telephone or Internet communications.
Although such viewership information is useful, obtaining it from the box has a shortcoming because it is not possible to know whether at the same time that the box is sending viewership information the TV is still ON. In other words, since the box and the TV operate independently of each other, it is possible for the TV to be OFF while the box is ON. When this happens, the box keeps feeding viewership information signals back to the provider as if the TV were still being watched. Of course, information obtained under these conditions will skew the results to show a higher viewership than that which actually occurred. Thus, it is important to know not only the information provided by the box but also whether or not the TV is simultaneously ON while the box was providing the viewership information signals.
If all that were required was to know whether or not the TV is ON while the box is ON, this could be determined by some ON/OFF sensor. However, TVs are currently used for various tasks other than watching programs fed by the cable/satellite providers. For example, a videogame can be played on the TV, or the TV screen can be used as the output of a PC. This, as well as several other uses, require the TV to be ON, but it is not displaying a TV program. Consequently, it is necessary to know not only that the TV is ON but also that it is displaying a program fed to it by the cable/satellite providers.